Lee laughed politely, then turned serious once more. “Please believe me when I express my sincere compliments on the skill with which you handled the Army of the Potomac, General Grant. Never in the course of the war did I face an abler opponent, nor one who put more of his men into the battle.”
Grant’s pale blue eyes met and held his. All at once, he realized how much the Federal commander still ached to fight. “Had it not been for your repeaters, General Lee, I maintain we should have been treading on the streets of Richmond rather than here.”
“That may be so, General,” Lee said. From what Andries Rhoodie had told him, it was so. But Ulysses Grant did not need to know that. And the South did have those repeaters.
Having Rhoodie pop up in his thoughts made Lee glance over to the Rivington men, who stood in a small group of their own on the White House lawn, a few paces from the assembled officers of the Army of Northern Virginia. Not all the men from out of time were there. Two had died in the fighting outside Washington, and another three were wounded. Confederate soldiers had carried one of them back to the surgeons, who amputated his shattered leg.
The Rivington men got their other two wounded fighters back to a physician of their own. From what Lee had heard, Confederate soldiers who saw their wounds thought they would lose limbs, too. Yet. here both of them stood with their comrades, bandaged but whole. Their eyes were clear of fever, too, and fever killed more men than bullets. The Rivington men had also reclaimed the man upon whom the Confederates had operated. Fever had already seized him; the surgeons were sure he could not last long. The doctor from out of time broke the septic fever, though. That Rivington man was not here, but by all accounts he would live.
All the Confederate surgeons were still scratching their heads; a few had already begged the Rivington physician for lessons. Lee’s hand went for a moment to the vial of white pills in his waistcoat pocket. In 2014, medicines did what they claimed to do.
Lee’s thoughts returned to the ceremony. “Shall we proceed, sir?”
But Grant still had the recent battle on his mind. “If your gunners hadn’t wrecked the Long Bridge, we would have driven you out of Washington City even after you penetrated our fortifications outside of town.”
“Your men crossing in large numbers from Virginia certainly would have made our task more difficult,” Lee said. “You have Brigadier General Alexander to blame for their inability to do so.” He gestured toward the artillery commander of Longstreet’s corps.
E. Porter Alexander was an enthusiastic-looking officer of about thirty, with sharp gray eyes and a full, rather pointed brown beard. He said, “Blame my pair of rifled Whitworth cannon, General Grant. Those two English guns were the only pieces I had with the range and accuracy to hit the bridge from my position.”
“Shall we proceed, sir?” Lee asked Grant again. This time the Federal commander gave a brusque nod. Lee turned to the Confederate musicians. “Gentlemen, if you please.”
The bandsmen struck up a brisk tattoo. The Confederate sentries who had patrolled the White House grounds since the Army of Northern Virginia: seized Washington now formed themselves in two neat ranks. Their leader, a lieutenant in a clean, well-pressed uniform, borrowed specially for the occasion, saluted Lee.
Lee returned the courtesy, then spoke formally to Grant: “In recognition of the armistice between our countries, and in recognition of the cooperation United States forces have shown in removing themselves from the territory of the Confederate States, it is my honor to return custody of the White House, and through it of all Washington, to the U.S.A.”
“I accept them back, General Lee, on behalf of the United States of America,” Grant said—hardly a fancy speech, but well done in a plain sort of way. The Southern musicians fell silent. After a moment, Grant remembered to signal to his own band. They took up the same tattoo the Confederates had abandoned; Lee wondered if Grant noticed it was the same. Federal sentries in blue marched onto the White House lawn to replace the sentries in gray who had come away from the mansion.
“May our two nations long enjoy peace and amicable dealings with each other,” Lee said.
“I also hope peace is maintained between us, General Lee,” Grant said.
Lee fought down a touch of pique. Even now, the Federal leaders remained reluctant to acknowledge the Confederacy as a country in its own right. Back to basics, then: “We shall return to Virginia tomorrow. My thanks to your engineers for having so quickly and competently repaired the Long Bridge.”
“We shan’t be sorry to see the Army of Virginia go immediately”—Grant said the word as if it were spelled immejetly—”and that is the truth, sir. We would have had you on your way sooner, but—”
“But you were busy wrecking the fortifications on the Virginia side of the Potomac and removing your guns from them so we should have no opportunity to turn them against you,” Lee finished when the commander of the Army of the Potomac ran down in the middle of his sentence. Grant nodded. Lee went on, “In your situation, I should have done the same.”
Lee glanced back toward the White House, wondering if President Lincoln would come out to take part in the ceremony. But Lincoln, as he’d done since the day when Washington fell, remained inside.
Rumor said his melancholia was at such a pitch that he spoke to no one, but stayed alone all day in a darkened room. Lee knew rumor lied. Federal messengers went in and out of the White House at all hours of the day and night. That was as well. No less than the Confederacy, the United States would need a strong hand to guide them through the aftermath of war. But for now, the pain of loss was simply too much to let Lincoln show himself in the Southern-held Federal capital.
“Good day to you, General Grant.” Lee held out his hand. Grant shook it. His grip was hard and firm; though small, he seemed strong. Lee nodded to the Confederate band. It began to pay “Dixie.” Grant turned toward the Confederate flag a color-bearer carried. He removed his black felt hat. “Thank you, sir,” Lee said, glad Grant at least would publicly salute the Stainless Banner.
“If it’s to be done, it should be done properly,” Grant said, echoing Lincoln. “I wish it weren’t being done.”
The Federal band swung into “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Lee immediately removed his own hat in salute to the flag that had once been his. Those Confederate officers who wore hats imitated their leader. Almost all of them had served in the old army under that flag. Many had fought in Mexico and against Indians alongside the Federal officers behind Grant. Those bonds were sundered forever now.
The music ended. Lee and Grant exchanged one last salute. The Confederate officers left the White House grounds to return to their quarters; many of them were staying at Willard’s: Lee and his aides still slept in their tents, which they’d set up near the State Department building. But even Lee did not deny himself Willard’s table. The oysters were monstrous good.
He turned to Walter Taylor. “We shall go home now. Let the tents be struck.”
The Yankees had built a fort to cover the southern end of the Long Bridge. Lee stood on the earthen walls and watched the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia file past, bands playing, flags fluttering in the breeze, men singing and cheering the end of the war. Some of the soldiers tramped south to Alexandria, to take the Orange and Alexandria Railroad—or that portion of it still intact—toward Richmond. Others marched northwest along the road that paralleled the Potomac, headed for Fort Haggery across from Georgetown. Though armistice had come, Confederates and Federals still felt the need to take precautions against each other.
Lee walked over to the post to which Traveller was hitched. He let Walter Taylor untie the horse, then mounted. He rode northwest himself. His staff officers followed. They kept a careful distance—ahead, hardly more than a mile away, stood Arlington on its commanding hill. Arlington, the mansion in which he’d been married; Arlington, the great house in which his wife had lived, and he too, when duty brought him close to Washington; Arlington, fro
m which Mary Custis Lee had fled a week before Virginia formally seceded…Arlington, which the Federals had captured and used as their own for the three years since.
Every minute brought Lee closer, every minute showed him more, clearly how harsh the Federals had been. Earthen forts scarred the grounds he had labored so hard to restore in the years just before the war. Endless stables for Federal cavalry had gone up between the mansion and the Potomac. The horses were out of them now, but the memory of their presence lingered still. Lee wished for Hercules to cleanse the row on row of wooden sheds, but even the demigod might have found it beyond his powers.
Also deserted were the cabins and huts south of the stables. No, not quite deserted: a black face peered out at Lee from behind a wall, then vanished again. But most of the free Negroes had fled their shantytown when Washington fell for fear of being reenslaved in the aftermath of Confederate victory. Irony there, Lee thought; he had manumitted all the estate’s nearly two hundred bondsmen on his father-in-law’s death.
The west wind blew the stables’ stench away from him. But a new miasma came from Arlington itself, a miasma compounded of sweat and filth and pus and suffering: the Federals had made his home into a hospital. Dwarfed by the heavy Doric columns of the porch, doctors in blue still hurried back and forth. Lee had exempted the place from the general Federal evacuation of Southern soil until the last wounded man could be moved without suffering.
Arlington’s lawns had been sadly neglected under the Northern occupation; they were uncut, unwatered, and unkempt. Here and there, not far from the mansion, fresh, raw upturnings of red Virginia earth further marred what had once been a smooth and lovely expanse. Under that freshly turned soil lay Federal soldiers slain in the Wilderness, at Bealeton, and, he supposed, in the fighting in and around Washington City. The Confederate repeaters had filled all Washington’s proper cemeteries to overflowing. Injured men who died here stayed here.
One of the hurrying Federal doctors at last caught sight of Lee. When the man recognized him, he stopped so short he almost stumbled. Then he came down the hill toward him at a trot. He saluted as if Lee commanded his own army. “Sir, I am Henry Brown, surgeon of the 1st New Jersey.” He wore captain’s bars and a haggard expression. “How may I help you? May I show you through—your home?”
“Wounded men yet remain inside, sir?” Lee asked.
“Yes, General, perhaps to the number of a hundred. The rest have either recovered sufficiently to be taken elsewhere or—” Brown jerked a thumb in the direction of the new graves.
“I cannot imagine your soldiers would wish to see me, when I am the author of their pain,” Lee said. “I would not inflict myself upon them.”
“Many of them, I think, would be pleased if you visited.” One of Brown’s eyebrows quirked upward. “As you may be aware, sir, you are held in considerable respect by the Army of the Potomac.” Lee shook his head. The surgeon persisted: “It truly would help restore their spirits, I believe.”
“Only if you are certain, sir,” Lee said, doubtful still. Brown nodded vigorously. Lee said, “Very well, then. I am relying upon your good judgment.”
He swung down from Traveller. When his staff officers saw him head for the mansion, they exclaimed and dismounted. too. They rushed after him. Charles Marshall drew his sword; Venable and Taylor took out pistols instead. “You mustn’t go alone into that nest of Yankees, sir,” Taylor protested.
“I thank you for taking thought of my safety, gentlemen, but I doubt I am thrusting myself into a desperadoes’ lair,” Lee said.
“No, indeed,” Henry Brown said indignantly.
Flanked by his aides and the surgeon, Lee strode between the two central columns up onto the porch of his old home. A startled Federal sentry at the door presented arms to him. He politely dipped his head to the man. Not long ago, the fellow would have been overjoyed to kill him. Now he remained on Confederate soil only because Lee declined to evict his wounded comrades.
The sickroom smell, almost palpable outside, grew thicker still when the sentry opened the door to let Lee go through. A surgeon probing a wound looked up in surprise. “Get on with it, goddam you,” his patient gasped. Then he too saw who stood in the doorway. “No. Wait.”
Lee looked at the thin men who lay on cots in what had been his front room. They stared back, many of them with fever-bright eyes, His name ran in a whisper from bed to bed. A young blond soldier, his right arm gone at the shoulder, heaved himself up to a sitting position. “You come to gloat?” he demanded.
Lee almost turned on his heel to walk out of Arlington then and there. But before he could move, another Federal, this one with only half a left leg, said, “Come on, Joe, you know he ain’t that way.”
“I came to see brave men,” Lee said quietly, “and to honor them for their bravery. The war is over now. We are countrymen no longer. But we need be enemies no longer, either. I would hope one day for us to be friends again, and hope that day comes speedily.”
He walked from bed to bed, chatting briefly with each man. Joe and a couple of others turned their heads away. But as Henry Brown had predicted, most of the men seemed eager to meet him, eager to talk with him. The question he heard oftenest was “Where’d you rebs get those damned repeaters?” Several men added, as Ulysses Grant had, “Wouldn’t’ve been for them, we’d’ve licked you.”
“The rifles come from North Carolina,” he said over and over, his usual answer, true but incomplete. As usual, the Federals found it hard to believe. As usual, they would have found the truth even harder.
One big, high-ceilinged room after another. Lee gave all his attention to the broken men on their canvas cots. They deserved it; they had fought as gallantly as any Southerner and kept up the fight as long as they could in the face of the AK-47s’ overwhelming firepower. Concentrating on the soldiers also kept him from noticing how Arlington itself had suffered. But the brutal fact struck home, no matter how he tried to avoid it. He’d never been good at self-deception.
The mansion—his mansion—had till recently held far more wounded Federals than now inhabited it. Their blood and other, less noble, bodily fluids stained rugs, floors, walls. Those floors and walls were also scarred and chipped from the rough use they’d taken since 1861. He’d expected nothing better.
He’d also expected much of the old furniture to be missing. Rich goods in the house of an enemy were fair game for soldiers. But he had not expected the vandalism of what remained, the destruction for destruction’s sake. Yankees had carved their initials into those bureaus and chests that were too heavy to carry off and had escaped being chopped up for firewood. Scrawls, some of them filthy, decorated the walls.
The sole relief Lee knew was that Mary was not at his side. Arlington had been her home before it was his; seeing it now would bring her only grief. The war had been cruel to her: forced from Arlington, then from White House, the family plantation on the Pamunkey—the plantation had ended up as McClellan’s base for his assault on Richmond, and White House itself burned to the ground. Now the South had victory, but at what price?
Only now did he think that he could have avenged the burning of one White House with the burning of another. He shook his head, rejecting the idea. Bandits and guerrillas made war that way; civilized nations did not.
“We must have a just and lasting peace, gentlemen,” he told the wounded Federals lying in the room where he and Mary had so often slept together. “We must.”
Maybe the vehemence in his usually gentle voice touched the soldiers. One of them said, “I expect we will, General Lee, with men like you around to help make it.”
Moved in spite of himself, Lee said, “God bless you, young man.”
“Out this door here,” Henry Brown said, pointing.
“I do know my way, doctor, I assure you,” Lee replied. Brown stammered in embarrassed confusion. Lee was embarrassed, too, at his own sarcasm. “Never mind, sir. Lead on.”
At last the ordeal was over. Lee and his staff
officers walked out of Arlington to their horses, which were cropping the grass they could reach. The Federal surgeon said, “Thank you for your gracious kindness, General. The men will remember your visit for the rest of their lives, as shall I.”
“Thank you, doctor. I hope that, by your aid and that of your colleagues, those lives are long and healthy. A good afternoon to you, sir.”
Henry Brown hurried back into Arlington to resume his duties. Lee stood by Traveller for several minutes without mounting, his eyes never moving from the mansion. At last, Charles Venable asked hesitantly,” Are you all right, sir?”
Recalled to himself, Lee started slightly. His fist came down on Traveller’s saddle, hard enough that the horse let out a startled snort. His eyes were still on Arlington. “Too bad,” he said. “Too bad! Oh, too bad!”
He climbed aboard Traveller and rode away. He supposed his staff officers followed, for they were there when he needed them again. But he did not look back.
The train puffed into Manassas Junction, jerked to a noisy stop. The thick black smoke that blew back into every car smelled strange, wrong to Nate Caudell: the engine was a big, coal-burning brute, newly captured from the Yankees, not wood-fueled like the locomotives the Confederacy had been using.
“All out, boys,” Captain Lewis called. “We’ve got more marching to do.” The men of Company D rose, and part of Company E with them. After the fighting from the Wilderness to Washington City, a single passenger coach was more than enough to hold a company.
As she stepped down from the train, Mollie Bean said, “Smoothest railroading trip I ever took.”
“No wonder,” Caudell said, crunching down onto gravel beside her. “This stretch of the Orange and Alexandria stayed in Federal hands up till the very end of the war. They didn’t have to make their trains run on patches and prayers the way we did.” He stretched till something crackled in his back. His seat had been too hard and too upright: He supposed he should count himself lucky all the same. Some Confederates were coming south on freight cars.
The Guns of the South Page 26